Lawsuit Filed to Keep Texas Supreme Court Justice Off Republican Primary Ballot

Posted on by May 15, 2012
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On May 15, Michele Petty, a candidate for Texas Supreme Court, place 6, filed a lawsuit in state court, seeking to keep her only opponent off the Republican primary ballot for that office. Petty is the only Democrat running. She wants the petition for Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht declared invalid, which would prevent him from appearing on the Republican primary ballot. Thus, he could not run for re-election, because Texas does not permit write-ins in primaries. The lawsuit is Petty v Texas Republican Party.

Here is the complaint. Texas does not normally require petitions for candidates to get on primary ballots, but candidates for partisan statewide judicial offices do need a petition. Such petitions need 50 signatures from each of the 14 state judicial appellate districts. The complaint charges that the petition for the Fort Worth area district did not fill in three blanks at the top of the form. Each petition has a statement in both English and Spanish. Both the English-language sentence, and the Spanish-language sentence, contains blanks. The blanks are to be filled in by the candidate’s name and the name of the office being sought. Judge Hecht’s petition for the Fort Worth district didn’t fill in the blanks in the Spanish part of the form.

Texas courts have usually not enforced ultra-strict compliance with such technicalities.

Charleston, South Carolina Newspaper Editorial Suggests Candidates Use Independent Petition Procedure

Posted on by May 15, 2012
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The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, has this editorial. It recommends that the 180 or so Democrats and Republicans who were kept off their party’s primary ballots should submit petitions to qualify as independent candidates.

The editorial says the petition deadline is July 9, but actually, according to the law and the South Carolina Election Commission, it is July 16. The law says the deadline is July 15 but that is a Sunday, so the deadline becomes noon on July 16.

“Operation Lost Vote” Organizes to Help South Carolina Candidates Qualify as Independents

Posted on by May 14, 2012
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According to this news story, on May 14, the 3-judge U.S. District Court hearing Somers v South Carolina Election Commission orally ruled after the hearing that no relief can be granted to the candidates left off the June 12 primary ballot. Almost 200 candidates were kept off Democratic and Republican primary ballots (for state legislature and local partisan office) because of confusion over the deadline for filing a Statement of Economic Interests.

The story also says, at the bottom, that a group called “Operation Lost Vote” will help these candidates to collect signatures to get on the ballot as independents. The petitions are due in mid-July. They are very stringent, and require signatures equal to 5% of the number of registered voters (the law is much easier for statewide independents, and somewhat easier for independent candidates for U.S. House).

South Carolina has had very few independent candidates on its general election ballot. No one has ever qualified as an independent candidate for statewide office, other than President; and no one has ever qualified for U.S. House as an independent. Independent candidates appear on the November ballot with the label “By petition”, not “independent.” Over the years there have been qualified minor parties in South Carolina named the Independent Party, and anyone looking at old election returns might be deceived. True independent candidates are listed in the election returns as “petition” candidates, not “independent” candidates.

New York Will Recount State Senate Special Election Ballots Manually

Posted on by May 14, 2012
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On March 20, New York state held a special election to fill the vacant State Senate seat in the 27th district, which is in Brooklyn. The only two candidates were David Storobin (nominated by the Republican and Conservative Parties) and Lew Fidler (nominated by the Democratic and Independence Parties). (Storobin also submitted a petition to be the nominee of the “School Choice” Party, but that petition failed).

Now that all the votes have been counted, Storobin leads by 27 votes. This is such a close margin that the votes will be re-tallied by hand. The previous count was by feeding paper ballots into an optical scan reader. See this story. The winner will only serve for the remainder of this calendar year. The district has essentially been eliminated for the 2012-2020 decade.